Last Seen in Gotham
by Old Emerald Eye
Summary: There are people like Dawn in Gotham. Ficlet collection.
1. What You See (Is What You Get)

**Title**: What you see (Is what you get)

**Pairing**: Dawn/Selina Kyle

**Summary**: A shared possession of scars.

Part one of the _Last Seen in Gotham_ series.

**Fic Prompt**: Scars

* * *

Scars.

They both have them.

Tiny. Thin. Pale, pale lines.

White marks.

They could put a number to them. Don't.

Dawn's biggest (not the most noticeable, because she keeps them covered, won't speak about them, but that's okay because Selina doesn't speak about hers either) are a matched pair. Diagonal lines across her abdomen.

Mood scars. They change red – purple – white.

(If they sometimes have a green tint, Dawn says nothing. Selina doesn't mention it.)

They're ticklish. Sensitive.

Selina's scars are myriad. Small. Scattered across her skin.

Constellations of stars.

There are no cat marks on her hands, not like Dawn, but jagged slate has left a ridge just below her thumb.

One knuckle is a shade lighter than the others.

When they sleep, Dawn traces the tracks on her back.

They match.


	2. Shades of Emerald

They both etch green across the backdrop of dull Gotham grey. Pamela with her vines, her plants and the regeneration of the natural world. Humans might call her and her existence poison, but she knows better. Does better.

Dawn is green threefold.  
In the way of humanity, with her inexperience, allowing the moss she's petting to stain her fingertips, and the way she glows, filtering the air around her like a forest canopy.

They may call her crazy, but she knows the truth of what she sees, and her plants do too. There's nothing unnatural about life gravitating towards life.


	3. These Twisted Tongues Tighten Tensions

**Title:** These Twisted Tongues Tighten Tensions

**Summary**: Dawn is not a fan of the Riddler, or most of Gotham's villain gallery. It's a professional thing. He's even less fond of what little he knows about her.

Part three of the _Last Seen in Gotham_ series.

**Previously;**

What you see (Is what you get)

Shades of Emerald

**Fic Prompt**: Puzzle

* * *

Dawn has been cracking prophecies open almost the entire time that she's been alive. Some of them were written figuratively, in code, on top of being Sumerian.

Compared to a background like that, the knack of getting inside the Riddler's mind is easy. Not that he can help the fact that there is only a bare handful of museums for him to ... well to be honest Dawn isn't exactly sure what he was planning, but she's been in Gotham long enough to know it was either a threat or a hideout claim or some form of theft. (Although why he'd want to announce he was planning to steal something Dawn did not know. Maybe the dessert in Arkham was really good or something?)

It's not like Dawn's attached to the buildings in question, with the exception of the Gotham Museum of Art, which has really nice couches for a public building, but other people get caught in the crossfire – the sort that are in museums because they're museums. Saving the world isn't Dawn's job, but letting kids get hurt is not her job either. It shouldn't be anyone's.

Dawn only gives up on the cop's slow progress twice and calls in a tip to their headquarters' phone line before Selina catches on and straightens her out.

It's not the best paying job around – that would involve museums or being Bruce Wayne – but with Arkham's revolving door policy, it's steady enough pay, enough to fund Dawn's culinary experimentation and leave a bit on the side for when the heating breaks down. Ivy's citrus vines really like her spicy meatloaf with pineapple. Selina, not so much.

Nice as it is to have a new, semi-regular stream of income (for something she does, and would probably do, anyway) Dawn is supremely disinterested in acquiring a villainous rival. That sort of thing was for her sister and her posse of slayerettes. Unfortunately, she wasn't consulted about it. Rather, she has been consulting, and the nature of her work brought her to the attention of one of Gotham's more recognizable showpieces.

Everyone who arrived in town knew of the Bat, and Dawn herself lived with a certain Cat, if clandestinely, but the Riddler was right up there with the Joker for flashy, eye-catching visibility. He was on posters and other touristy knickknacks and everything.

And he isn't pleased with the increased efficiency she adds to the official response to his acts, or the reduced time he gets to complete whatever his plot of the week is. (Strangely enough, it's never world end-age in Gotham.) Dawn, if she looks at it from his perspective, can see how that might be a bit annoying. But only a bit.

The neon green paint pattern, when Dawn gets to see it, is fairly unambiguous for one of Riddler messages, but in his defense it is hard to hijack the public broadcast from within Arkham. The way that the Batlight – Batlantern? Dawn's never been bothered enough to learn what it's called – projects it onto the clouds for all of downtown to see is a nice touch. Very theoretical.

It's a good thing Gotham's general background level craziness is enough that by the end of the week the message has become nothing but another brief incident for everyone else, and it messes with mystical tracing, because if it wasn't Dawn would be on the first bus out that didn't have a suspicious amount of sprinklers installed. Burglary was universal. Selina could adjust to life just about anywhere. Without that, a personal feud – even if technically it was with Aurora Samhradh instead of Dawn Summers – would beat a dozen vague attempts by various organizations and lone wolves to get at the Slayer or the new Council through her innocent, defenseless, gullible baby sister or even that one group in Colorado making noise about the key to some ancient technology. Half of it isn't even hostile, just annoying.


End file.
